The Flesh, Full Of Black Sand hails from Tyler, TX and is the work of one Dakota Snaketail. They describe themselves thus: “Minimalistic droning dark ambient. Listen with headphones while you're falling asleep.” Sounds good, so let’s see how it plays out. This disc consists of one track, “The Door is Open,” and consists of deep, low end drone. This is music for subterranean rituals, and listening to it with headphones gives some sense of the layers in the music. It never really gets too intense, but it keeps shifting ever so slightly, which keeps it from sounding like someone just looped the same drone for 18 minutes. Slow-moving synth washes peek out here and there, almost imperceptibly at first, then coming more to the forefront. Overall, this is pleasant dark ambient that makes me interested to see what they could do with a full album. Well worth picking up. This album weighs in at around 18 minutes and is limited to 42 copies.

Sacra Fern is the project of Dmitry Fedoschenko that is based on a form of dark ambient with extensive use of field recordings. This release is presented as a sort of soundtrack for a video part developed upon shots in the forest tied to the presentation of this release which describes the stone giving the title to this release as a magical artifact which can absorb power. The singing birds of "I Saw It" opens this release upon a droning crescendo and generate a tension as they seems to escape from somewhere. The long track which is the center of this release, "Transparent", starts in a quiet and meditative mood where all metallic beat are exalted as the drone is not the gravity center of the track but only an element to underline the field recordings and the small sounds which are the main element of the track; so, the result is closer to certain ritual music rather than proper ambient. The framework of "Black Rain" is instead a more canonical dark ambient with a small interlude based on field recording. "Storm Of The Century" is a short drone crescendo which underlines the menacing field recordings in a rather evocative way. The bells of the first part of "Crimson River" are almost enchanting in their resonances and bring the listener toward the final part of this release with the field recording of what is sounds like an extinguishing fire.With his reasonably personal use of field recordings this release doesn't sound just like another dark ambient release but as a more elaborated release. It could be a little too adventurous for fans used to releases which sound more or less the same but will find something worth a listen. A really nice release.

Mike Cooper uses his collection of guitars as a primary sound source, but wraps and envelops them in thick processing and ambience to create ‘ambient exotica soundscapes’. This release takes those soundscapes and fuses them back with more conventional instrumental song structures, sometimes bordering on pop, resulting in a rather idiosyncratic whole with a quite distinct flavour. While ‘exotica’ might sometimes bring with it connotations like ‘kitsch’ and ‘cheese’, more often than not this is a brooding collection of sonics from the underbelly of the same soundworld.

The first side of the LP is made up of eight short tracks, some just vignettes, ranging from the quirky Hawaiian-tinged lounge vibe of “Running Naked” to the slightly sinister ambiences of “Shindo’s Blues”.

The second side of the LP is entirely given over to the 18-minute piece “Legong / Gods Of Bali”, a more immersive wallowing in bells and reverb and gentle exotic rhythms that’s quite mesmerising if just sometimes shading a little too close to the ‘Glastonbury wigged-out hippy tent’ vibe.

Distinctive and full of character, it’s an unusual dark twist on tropical tones that tells its own story and tells it well.

This is a compact 10” collection of ten short numbered ‘correspondence pieces’ between Neumann and Nielsen where they experiment with piano-sourced sounds and process and rework them digitally into unrecognisable electronic shapes and atmospheres with a synthetic and sometimes slightly harsh attitude.

Super-short repeating glitches pan and warp over low grumbling sounds that sometimes make way for more harmonious layouts. Percussive elements drenched in delay are layered spontaneously, never really forming conscious patterns. At times, such as in part 5, there’s a certain sci-fi quality to the heavy use of effects.

It’s a very coherent 22-minute work, divided almost unnecessarily into ten tracks, but it’s very familiar experimental soundscaping territory and it falls a little short of the unique character or challenge that would make it really notable.

Jensen’s previous drones and atmospheres work was built from electronic sources, but for this new 6-track collection the key ingredient is processed recordings of string instruments. These long, organic sustained notes and tones are layered up, reworked and effected into otherworldly environments that certainly sound deeply electronic, but the string roots don’t disappear and it never wholly detaches from classical string instrument timbres and the emotional shortcuts that they provide.

As such, what we’ve got here is a decidedly emotive collection of drones. It’s surprisingly warm at times, with glacially slow pitch changes working the tone in and out of pleasantness but never getting truly harsh. There are noise elements, for example in “Eternity In Finitude”, but they are, like everything else here, polished and softened into a broad gentleness.

It often languishes at the edge of your attention- “Silence Within The Sound” and most-melodic final track “The Passing By” both sounding like they could have been written for a tense moment in a video game where the audio was intended to unnerve you without properly being heard. There are occasional shades of rhythm, subtle pulsings within “A Shape Within A Material” that are barely audible yet carefully increase the tension aspect. “From The One To The Other” might be a good gateway track with which to introduce ‘the deeper stuff’ to fans of M83 or Radiohead who might be interested in delving deeper into what electronic music has to offer.

As temporal experiences of albums go it’s rather short, barely scraping over 30 minutes. Seeking “the boundaries between true music and naked sound” has brought Jensen into territory that won’t sound especially new or revolutionary to long-time listeners of ambient, but nevertheless it’s a polished and high-quality-sounding example of its kind and it does have the power to hit a nerve.